Bad experience with petrol station

Every day, most of us will be searching for a target amongst the distractors. Thus, the representations of the target should be able to facilitate our visual processing and attention as Eimer and Kiss (2008) stated that when targets that we are searching are defined by a specific characteristic, like color, we tend to focus towards the specific feature, which will then control our attention in visual search task.  

Then, in the real world, what will happen if the specific characteristics of the targeted object are different from what we are searching for?

Last two weeks, when my sister was driving my family and I to one of the dimsum's restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, the car almost ran out of oil. Then, she decided to go to the nearby Shell station to top up the oil. 

Speaking of which, I have been going to petrol station to top up the car oil for many times, even before I got my driving license. Therefore, going to a petrol station to top up for car oil is really an easy piece of work to be done. However, on that day other than topping up the car oil, I was asked to help looking for the petrol gun that we wanted to use because my sister and I did not know how to differentiate which is which unless i could see the word 97 from the small stations.

At the Shell station

There were so many cars in the Shell station, and only two small stations were emptied. Then, my sister drove straight to the direction. Meanwhile, she continuously asked me which one we were going to use. Honestly, I was in the exactly same situation as her; I did not know whether which we should go for.

Experience of looking for the right fuel 

I knew that we wanted to use the fuel 97, so I asked her to drive slightly closer for me to see the word next to the petrol gun, but it was really difficult to see the word in the car because the thick, black pipes was blocking our way to see the word clearly. The image below was not good in explaining the situation because i took this photo right in front the small station. So, please assume that if this small station was at the left hand side and my sister was driving to this small station, you might be able to imagine that how the black pipes will block our way to see the word 97 as the black pipes, rather at the side that do not have words, were right on the word that can help us to differentiate which oil pump was 95 or 97. 

(Image above is labeled as image 1)

But, please bear with me that I did not take the side of this picture to explain the situation clearer. 

Then, I asked her to reverse her car as I saw a guidance board (refer to the image beside) that could guide us from differentiating between fuel 97 and fuel 95. Right after looking at the board, I told my sister that fuel 97 might have the red color pump. Thus, both of us just focus on deliberately finding the red color pump. Yet, none of the oil pump was red in color. Instead, they were either yellow color or green color as you can see from the image 1. 

             

           

Based on the statement of Eimer and Kiss (2008), I could say that "The different colors of two information, Shell V-Power 97 (red in color) and Shell Fuel Save 95 (green in color), on the guidance board are the specific characteristics that have been defined by the Shell management".

Thus, after looking at this board, we tend to focus on the define characteristics on the board, which is the red color information to the similar characteristic of the target we were searching for, which is the oil pump as our attention is unconsciously controlled by the color we saw on the board.

Then, my sister drove back and forth, and a little closer than just now so that I could see the little white English word that states 97 and 95 (refer to image 1 for the little white English word that states 97 and 95). Unfortunately, I still couldn’t read the word distantly as the black pipes were blocking our way to look at the words accurately (which I already have explained earlier).

Eventually, I woke my father up and asked him which to go, and he directly pointed us to the right station. When I walked down from the car, I finally understand why the word of fuel 97 on the guidance board was red in color as from image 1 you can see that the sticker that stated 97 was red in color, rather than the oil pump itself was red in color.

Conclusion

Even though the color of the information on the board is equally the same as the color of the word beside the two pumps, because the former does not correspond to the color of the gas pumps, this might increase the time and effort of people in finding their target because color information will contribute to object recognition (Nako, Grubert, & Eimer, 2016). 

Recommendation

Thus, I think that if the color on the board is correspondent to the color of the oil pump, the other users will not experience the same difficulty as me when they are searching for their target in Shell station. In addition, having a high similarity color feature between the oil pump and the information on the board can help us to easily recognize our target. Otherwise, the Shell management could make the sticker bigger for everyone to look at it easily. Also, (looking at image 1) instead of putting the stickers beside the oil pump, the management can put the stickers sticker right above the oil pump for users to easily look at the word, fuel 97 or 95.  

References:

Eimer, M., & Kiss, M. (2008). Involuntary attentional capture is determined by task set: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1423–1433. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ jocn.2008.20099

Nako, R., Grubert, A., & Eimer, M. (2016). Category-based guidance of spatial attention during visual search for feature conjunctions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human perception and performance, 42(10), 1571-1586. doi:10.1037/xhp0000244